Song of the soul
About once a month you can sing in Amsterdam without worrying about how it sounds. A mantra-evening under the title: ‘Het Lied van de Ziel’ (The song of the soul). Jan Kortie accompanies such an evening on the piano. He brings it with great enthusiasm and lots of humor, but when he thinks it’s necessary he can get the whole room in a magical silence. Great!
Who is Jan Kortie?
The story of Jan Kortie’s life is different than most average lives. He graduated as an economist and started teaching. He discovered that his true passion was singing. Or rather; ‘tempt to sing‘.
He eventually went to work as a conductor, vocal teacher, workshop leader, trainer and voice therapist. Nice words, but actually none of them covered the contents. The word fitting by what Jan Kortie did was; ‘ liberator of the voice ‘. He introduced this term in the Netherlands and developed an unorthodox, cheerful approach to singing.
With this sentence as a guide: ‘your soul wants to sing’. This also became the title of his book. That book became the record of 25 years of unconventional work, in which it never was about methods or singing techniques, but always about the art to free yourself from the straightjacket of ‘ how it should be ‘. (Source: www.jankortie.nl)
Your soul wants to sing
And it’s true. One evening when I joint ‘Het Lied van de Ziel’ in De Amstelkerk, there was a moment I let al conventions go and enjoyed the singing. Loud and vibrating. And it felt good. Everyone kept singing, my sounds came together with many others, and I felt wonderful! It’s nice to sing with so much pleasure. I can heartily recommend it to you.
Would you also like to sing from the depths of your soul? Check out www.jankortie.nl for the dates. The next possibility is Friday evening June 17. In addition, you can also follow short and long workshops ‘Stembevrijding’ at Jan Kortie.
Photo credits: Hapé Saha/Joris van Bennekom